A weekend flurry of speculative articles stoked the Apple "iWatch" rumor mill, perhaps indicating that Cupertino is secreting some well-placed leaks to pump up interest in what it hopes might be its Next Big Thing™.
The Wall Street Journal, for one, reports (paid subscription required) that "people briefed on the effort" tell …

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Not likely called ' iWatch', though.

Re: Not likely called ' iWatch', though.

How long until the innevitable patent appears where Apple claim a "method of dividing temporal durations into a sequence of equal periods which combine into a hierarchy of increasingly larger periods that can be associated with the movement of the earth, moon and sun"

Re: Not likely called ' iWatch', though.

Apple units of time

iSecond - defined as the length of time before it takes for an iPhone owner's pupils to dilate after a quick fondle.

iMinute - defined as the length of time before drooling and sighing starts, post fondle.

iHour - defined as the minimum length of time a fanboi must stay in an Apple Store once the threshold has been crossed.

iDay - defined as the length of time before the first risible bug or shortcoming is found in a new piece of Apple software.

iMonth - defined as the length of time before a fanboi just might admit that his latest iStrokey isn't working quite as well as it should be, given its price and the 18 iHour queue in the rain to get the damn thing.

iAeon - defined as the length of time before Apple will comment obliquely on the bug found within one iDay.

Watch out for the patents

Never mind prior art, I bet they try to patent 'a device for indicating what proportion of the solar cycle has elapsed that can be attached to a limb', and the rest of us will then have to go back to wearing a half-hunter on a chain (probably no bad thing actually)

So long as...

...they don't just go through their portfolio replacing the innovative "on a mobile device" with "in a wearable item" - we'll all end up looking like Kryten whilst lawyers issue demands for the return of 50's-style bras and all episodes of Dallas, Dynasty etc have the shoulder pads pixellated out. Minecraft fashion for all...

I wonder how many different ways of telling the time a person will have on them if/when wearable computing becomes mainstream.

"The time you say? Well certainly sir, would that be phone time, iWatch time, or augmented reality glasses time? If you have a moment I can drop my trousers and a sundial will be projected from my arse"

Swatch tried introducing 'internet time' many years ago, subdividing the rotation of the earth into 'beats'. It didn't take off. But then, Swatch had a fairly normal-looking (by Swatch standards) watch with pager back in '94.

Re: A watch to make calls through your phone? How i-nnovative

>Of course with an iWatch, you'll have to charge it too

Since we're talking of hypotheticals at this stage, don't narrow your thinking so!

It depends on how much power it requires to do what it does. A few weeks back on the Reg, we had Zigbee light switches that took all the power they needed from the user throwing the switch, by means of piezo crystals. If that is too simplistic, then Apple have patents on certain aspects of wireless charging (namely a mechanism that prioritises which devices on your desk are charged first).

"so a bit like something sony came up with a few years ago to go with the xperia line of phones?"

They actually work with any Android device and the revision 1 model is mega cheap on Amazon (£16).

The second revision one had all the little foibles ironed out but is a bit pricier (£60ish).

It displays sms/incoming calls/phone status etc as well as running a shitload of custom apps.

You can even have google maps displayed on it, great for cycling etc, when you can leave the phone tucked away in a rucksack and navigate via the watch.

Its really easy to develop for as well, which is nice. Downside is that its not armour plated enough for the environments id be exposing it to. Nice toy to play with though.

The things i want in a smartwatch are ruggedness, water resistance and plenty of apps. If Apple can produce such a watch, and it doesnt cost a stupid amount or have some silly restrictions built in, colour me interested.

Quite cool

"so a bit like something sony came up with a few years ago to go with the xperia line of phones?"

Yes and Microsoft produced tablets before the iPad. Didn't take off though did they. The Sony watch hasn't either. I guess when the Apple watch takes off it will only be because the users are brainwashed, like everyone was brainwashed into preferring the iPad over MIcrosoft's offerings.

iWatch or iPhone ?

Do you remember the concepts mooted when the original iPhone rumor first surfaced ? And do you remember seeing the iPhone for the first time and laughing at the pictures splashed all over the magazines a week before launch of a white phone with a jog-wheel ? It’s happening again, only this time with the iWatch.

Re: iWatch or iPhone ?

Nice plug Theo..... but that article is just fucking bad - seriously, I don't like swearing even on the internet but I just cannot figure how else to express my disgust.

You tell me that "The mobile phone form factor as it is today is dying". I say bullshit. A quick Google shows that in the last quarter of 2012 smartphone sales alone have accounted for massive growth (47% compared to 2011) in the mobile phone sector.

Almost everyone I see has a smartphone and even my Luddite father who still has a Nokia 6310 has finally started talking about how he'd like a phone that "does something".

You then compound your nonsensical drivel by stating "Nobody really wants screen real-estate in a device we talk into, it’s senseless and unnecessary." Go and sit on a bus, take a train or even go a coffee shop. almost all people there will have a smartphone and it will appear to be glued to their hands.

Are you seriously saying that people will want a phone only if it's small and wearable? That apple will release this shit and the whole industry will collectively slap their forehead and see where they've all been going wrong?

Smartphones have their place in the world at the moment and have got there by combining features that people want, not by isolating a single subset. By your logic we'd all be walking around with a dumbphone and a tablet and that the original iphone should have failed.

I can see the point that a device to supplement your phone may be a good idea - on paper. However, if it was actually a good idea then the myriad of other devices that do the same job and are already on the market would be selling in the millions. please explain why, in your twisted vision of the near future the 'big' companies (Samsung et al) are not already all over this?

The rest of the article appears to be the deluded wanking fantasy of a 'futurist'. I wasted my time reading your article and it made me angry enough to write this, I'm not angry at your opinion just in the way that you've neglected to announce it as complete fiction at the beginning.

Re: iWatch or iPhone ?

I can't agree with the conclusion of that linked article ["the iWatch is the next iPhone"] because of the battery issue- a watch is too small for a decent sized battery, and it isn't convenient to charge.

Apple thought it better to omit 3G from the first iPhone because they didn't want the battery life to be a complete joke.

Re: iWatch or iPhone ?

I guess you haven't heard of the Pebble? Or taken a look at the market for GPS/heart monitor watches.

You might not want to accept it but until the point that it became possible to do away with PC's that market was booming ... who'd have guessed that a sizeable number of PC users actually only wanted them to do email, internet, play shit games and watch videos.

I don't want a smartphone ... I want a good sized Tablet that can make calls via a headset and as a potential purchaser of the Pebble I'd suggest that having such a device to sit inbetween the tablet and the headset is a brilliant idea ... seems like there's plenty of other people that think the same. But don't let that stop you holding onto outmoded ways of doing things.

Someone needs their meds

Couldn't agree more with The lone lurker's view on your article (It pisses me off when people plug their sites in comments btw and only serves to make me not want to visit it again)

"The mobile phone form factor as it is today is dying" - Since when, outside novelty items what other form factors for a mobile phone are you seeing. Stitching tech into fabrics, is one of the stupidest ideas that has been circulating of recent years and to date it hasn't taken off, simply because it's a bad idea. I can see specific applications where it may be of use but not on a mass consumer scale. The mobile phone form factor works because a. it's mobile, b. It's mobile and c. It's mobile, it doesn't need to be able to communicate with some other odd bit of cheap tech that's been stitched in before it works correctly.

"Nobody really wants screen real-estate in a device we talk into, it’s senseless and unnecessary" - Nobody apart from the tens of millions buying larger screen smartphones with one of the main reasons being it having ....larger screens. Even Apple the great "disrupters" have now conceded that people want larger screens.

The iWatch isn’t about controling apps from your wrist. The iWatch is the next iPhone - Which means that either people are going to either have to have their conversions in public and look like idiots, hold a watch type device to their ear and look like idiots or once again have an extra bit of equipment for the ear connected either by wireless or wired means, and will mean people have to walk around with bluetooth type devices hanging on their ears...and look like idiots.

After reading the article my first thought was why did he call this site successful workplace, and I would redirect you to the first two sentences of this comment

Re: The "new hotness"?

Re: The "new hotness"?

Or rather, the media are good at doing it - the hype for the ipad started before it was even announced, let alone released. Meanwhile Android tablets (some of which appeared in 2009) were ignored until recently. No doubt we'll see the same thing here, where the media give vast amount of coverage for some iwatch, whilst the earlier Android models are completely ignored. People will buy it just so they can walk around with an Apple logo stapled on their wrist. Meanwhile Casio etc will continue to sell far more watches.

Tablets were mainstream in the 2000s - it's just we didn't call them tablets, we called them names like PDAs, media players and smartphones (they're all handheld touchscreen computing devices - I mean, I was looking at mp3 players in 2009, and at the high end were large devices which ran Android or Windows, and did videos, Internet and apps - i.e., tablets) (the other kind of "tablet" - the laptop PC that was also a tablet - wasn't that mainstream, but then the ipad wasn't one of those anyway).

Re: More likely

Re: More likely

What makes you think it's Apple doing it? Seriously!

The collective tech journalist/analyst community, ably helped by bloggers and other riff-raff of dubious intellectual capability, have expended considerable effort and consumed many metres of column space successfully talking down the Apple stock.

Now that every one is long on the stock again, they can weave their weasel words again to the opposite effect.

Flexible glass is the wet dream of the tech press

It is totally impractical, unless you don't think having chips inside whatever the glass covers is important (yes, I read something about bendy silicon chips recently but that is research only and years if ever from being for sale)

No matter how bendy the glass, watches using it aren't going to wrap around your wrist, so quit dreaming about phones that fold or watches that curve around your wrist. Not going to happen, at least not anytime soon in the way it is being presented to a gullible public. Not to mention the bendy glass scratches much more easily than the Gorilla Glass used on phone screens and can still shatter, so might not be the best thing for something you wear around your wrist!

Watches that don't bend have been around for a long time, and people are fine with them. While having a good part of it (i.e., the band) fit nicely around the wrist is a good thing, it really doesn't matter if the whole thing does. In fact, I think I might find it harder to read if it did.

If Apple does come out with a watch, the deal they signed with the Swiss Railroad about using their clock might come in handy, as if I had to bet I'd guess the "show the time" mode for an Apple watch would show an analog dial, while a Google watch would show digital, complete with seconds.

Re: Flexible glass is the wet dream of the tech press

It's kind of funny, as an Apple hater I hope they fail, but as someone that has a reasonable grasp on reality I can see that they will succeed.

No one saw the iPhone coming or the iPad for that matter ... not that these things weren't already in existence, but that Apple would be so successful reinventing them as their own.

I'd go for a watch that did more than just tell the time. If I'm honest I rarely wear my watch as the phone covers timekeeping duties and I'm sure I'm not alone in this. How much more convenient would it be to be able to see sms etc on a watch without having to scramble for the phone at the bottom of the bag. how much easier would it be to be able to answer and dial calls via such a watch.

As long as it's well designed, looks good and costs an appropriate amount this will be a massive success and if you don't have one that's because you are behind the times, old fashioned and out to pasture.